NOVEL WEB 21: Old Dog, New Tricks
I said goodbye to my friends as soon as we were done eating, giving Finn an apologetic glance as I did so. When I got back to the workshop, only Charles, April, and one of the dudes were there. The random guy was carving out more candleholders, and April was messing around with the forge while Charles looked on.
“Back so soon, huh kid?” Charles asked, then squinted at me. “What’s up wit’ your face?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
Wait, oh no, did he see the changes? Oh shit, oh shit.
His gaze got more intense. “You look like… like one of them sissy gay boys.”
“Would it be bad if he was?” April asked, her tone and expression completely innocent.
“Well, I… he… it’s not,” Charles sputtered. “The bible—”
April stood up and placed one hand on a hip. “What did the bible say about reality becoming a video game?”
“I mean, I don’t know, I never read the whole—” Charles began, but April cut him off again.
“Just between you and me,” April said, leaning in towards us like we were discussing some big conspiracy. “I reckon that the bible got a whole lot of shit wrong.”
Instantly, Charles’ brows furrowed in anger and he opened his mouth to speak, but once more, April held up a hand. “I know, I know. I don’t mean that God and Jesus aren’t real and stuff. I mean things like ‘sissy boys’. You know what I think, I think that sounds like rich folks with an agenda rewriting the holy word of God to suit them.”
The old man took a long long second to think about that one. April had interrupted and spun him around so much that he was actually considering her words. Probably helped that like she said, the reality was now something akin to a video game.
“What kind of agenda would the rich folks even have that would mean they hate gay people,” Charles asked finally. “Don’t make no sense to me.”
April’s expression turned downright evil for a split second, and she jumped in for the kill. “Let me answer that by asking you a question. Back in your day, your labour, your knowledge, and your skills were respected more, right?”
The old man, clueless that he was dancing to the much younger woman’s tune, nodded emphatically. “Oh lord, yes. Nobody respects hard work anymore!”
“See, why do you think that is?” April asked.
“Because… well, the latest generations are weak, that’s why,” he grumbled, crossing his arms.
“Maybe… the world was easier to live in, in some respects,” she conceded, but then she picked up a chunk of squiron and pointed it around at the school. “I have a bit of a theory, though. It’s one I reckon you can help confirm for me, because you’ve lived through it. You see, the rich like money, and the best way they can get money is to own factories and companies and all that, right?”
Charles nodded, and I watched in fascinated awe. Where the heck was she going with this? What was even happening?
“Well, to actually make money from them, they need workers,” she continued. “But workers need pay and benefits and all that. It all adds up to a lot of money per worker. However, if there’s more workers to go around… well, suddenly there ain’t enough jobs for all those workers and they can undercut the experienced ones like you, who know their worth. I’m sure you’ve experienced this. So they get shoddy work from desperate people with half your years and a quarter of your experience, at an eighth of the wages. Does that sound right?”
“I think your numbers are off there, lass, but it’s true enough,” Charles agreed.
“Yeah, I’m just pulling the numbers outta’ my ass to make a point,” April chuckled, throwing the old man a sly wink. “Here’s the part that really gets you thinking, though. You know who have less kids, who adopt instead of making kids themselves? Gay folks. Gay people slow the rate of birth… which means less workers—”
This time, it was the old man who interrupted with a sharp intake of breath. “Girl… that’s not a bad theory. I always said that too many people was our problem. You know I used to be the machine-man for a few of the local mines ‘round here? Then I lost my damn job to some fuc— damn kids who didn’t know a flat head from a phillips! Then there was that lift that broke down, and I knew it was busted but they didn’t listen. Got the whole mine closed down when it killed those poor miners.”
“Yeah,” April said, before we got the full and uncut version of the story. “So would it be bad if Kai was a little queer? I mean… he’s been doing a damn good job so far, even if he does look soft.”
Charles placed his gaze back on me again, and I shuffled awkwardly on the spot. “I guess he’s been doin’ good work here. Alright, fine. Just don’t do any of that filthy shit where I can see it, okay?”
“Um… yes, sir?” I said, and then watched as Charles nodded and turned to wander away. “Oh, uh, sir, hold on…”
“Yeah?”
Clearing my throat, I launched into the pitch I’d had swimming in my mind before April’s little socialist speech. “I was wondering if you’d give the okay for me to start working on proper gear for our folks. We have this forge now, and I heard that one of my friends got hurt… so I want to make some armour and better tools for them.”
He seemed to consider it, but I could tell he was going to say yes purely so he could leave a situation that had confused the shit out of him. “Aye, that sounds good.”
Then he was gone, and I turned and raised an eyebrow at April, who was giving me the most shit-eating grin I’d ever seen on a person. “What the heck was that?”
“Something I’d been practising in my head for just such an occasion,” she laughed. “I honestly don’t know if there’s any scientific truth to all that crap I said, but it made him chill out and think things through a little, so it worked.”
“You’re fucking devious,” I replied, shaking my head in consternation.
Grinning again, she threw me a wink. “Don’t I know it.”
With a sigh, I shook my head and pointed to the forge. “Does that get hot enough to melt, or can it only work metal?”
“I haven’t tried it yet. We have a pretty limited amount of charcoal…”
“We can get more,” I said excitedly. “Let’s test it.”
"Okay, but we're burning the art department's entire supply of high quality drawing charcoal," she warned me, to which I just shrugged.
Rolling her eyes, she picked up a little packet and waggled it at me. "We'll need to cut it with normal wood anyway. What did you want to make?"
"A simple dagger blade, to start off with," I said. "Simple shape but hard to get right."
"Alright. My crucible is here, so all we need is the materials and a mould…" she gave me a pointed look, and I hurried off to make one.
I knew we had some casting sand somewhere… when I got into the storage room, I found a mountain of monster scrap sitting in a bin. Dayum, people were busy today.
I found a suitable jewellery box in the pile of student projects, then dug out the casting sand from where it was in a bag leaning against the wall. That, some chunks of squiron, and a chunk of wood came with me into the workshop again.
First, I took the piece of scrap wood and placed it in a vice. Once it was nice and tight, I grabbed a chisel, a carving knife, and a hammer and went to town. With practised taps of the hammer, I roughed out the shape of a dagger, then took the carving knife in to carefully finish the job. When I was done, I was greeted with the most average dagger blade and tang to ever grace the Earth. Thankfully, I was going for pure stabbability, not perfect marks in a workshop project.
Next, I grabbed the jewellery box and unscrewed the hinges and removed the top of it. Taking the lower half of the box, I began to pack the sand into it until it couldn’t hold any more. Then I pressed the dagger into it, sprinkled some chalk dust over the sand, and put the scalped top of the box over it. That too was filled with sand, leaving a small venting hole and a bigger pouring hole. Again, the sand was packed in tight, until it acted more as a solid block than individual grains.
The moment of truth came, and I pulled the top of the box away… and the sand stayed in it! Hurray! Quickly removing the wooden dagger and the little chunks of wood that made the holes, I checked everything was okay between the two halves and then pushed them back together.
When I returned with my mould and the squiron, April was waiting for me with the forge merrily burning away. “I saw you working. You’re damn quick, where did you learn all that?”
I shrugged and placed the mould down on the work table beside the forge. “I used to stay behind in workshop class. Also I had my own stuff at home before… all of this.”
“Lucky,” she said. “I had to fight tooth and nail to get into this craft. Anyway… the forge is ready. Is that the material we’re going to try and melt down?”
“Yeah, let’s do it!” I agreed with a goofy little excited jump.
April rolled her eyes. “Adorable.”
I tried not to react to the compliment, but… whoa. I liked being called that word. Adorable. She said I was adorable!
“You know, it’s so nice that we don’t have to smelt our iron from ore,” she mused as she placed the three squiron plates into her crucible. The crucible was basically a ceramic bowl with very high walls and a pouring spout on the lip.
“I don’t even know how iron is made,” I said, realising that gap in my knowledge as she spoke.
“Well, it’s made in giant factory furnaces these days, but they used to have to melt everything down in a big chimney looking thing called a bloomery. Then they’d pull the half melted blob of shite out from the bottom and bash it with a rock or a hammer until they chipped all the crap off it. Then they would hammer all the little pieces of iron together into a blobby ingot and… well, yeah,” she explained, pushing the crucible into the furnace. When it was safely seated in the roaring fire, she placed a brick in the way of the door and stood back.
She stared down at the brick door for a moment then gave me a sidelong look and chuckled, “Or, that’s the gist of the process anyway. I’ve never done it. What we’re doing tonight is trying to melt that squiron down. I’m not even sure it will work, though. Like, is it raw elemental iron, or is it an alloy like cast iron, or steel? This furnace might not get hot enough to melt the iron even with all the preparations we’ve made. Assuming it isn’t a low melting point alloy like cast iron.”
“What happens if it doesn’t melt?” I asked.
“Then we do this the very very long way and beat that chunk of squiron with a hammer until it resembles a knife,” she said wryly. “For now though, we wait and see…”
